Saturday, December 31, 2005
(11:47 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
Year-End Top Five
or, Ceci n'est pas une « meme »
This is not a meme intended to measure one's cultural consumption for the past year. It is an exercise that I am undertaking, simply for my own edification and reflection, which anyone may choose to undertake at their own sole discretion. None of these categories necessarily refers to items that first came into existence in 2005, but rather to items that became most important to me in 2005.Defining Albums of 2005:
- Iron & Wine, The Creek Drank the Cradle
- Regina Spektor, Soviet Kitsch
- Andrew Bird, Andrew Bird & The Mysterious Production of Eggs
- Cat Power, You Are Free
- Wilco, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (yes, still)
Favorite Books Read for the First Time in 2005:
- Giorgio Agamben, The Time That Remains
- Origen, First Principles
- Jacques Lacan, Les quatre concepts fondamentaux de la psychanalyse
- Giorgio Agamben, The Man Without Content
- Pierre Bourdieu, L'ontologie politique de Martin Heidegger
I guess one could do TV shows and movies, too, but I hardly ever go to the movies anymore, because (somewhat bizarrely) I get motion sickness very easily. I was somewhat shocked that it took me so long to come up with a list of books, but that's mainly because this year was made up of a lot of retreads, plus the translation project and the task of picking up German both seriously cut into my reading time. This was the first year of this century during which I did not read any book by Zizek.
One would expect my thought patterns to focus primarily on the school year, but the fact that I moved to Chicago early last January makes the calendar year a much more vivid indicator. Similarly, the year before, Richard and Kari moved out around Christmas time, and the year before that, Richard and I moved into the Bresee Ave. Bordello in February. I'm keeping up a pretty solid pattern of moving only during the dead of winter, preferably when it's incredibly icy out. (At one point during my move with Anthony and Hayley, I suddenly fell flat of my ass from a standing position, due to some very serious ice. The move before that, my truck, parked on the street, was randomly rear-ended due to icy road conditions.) Thankfully, the next time I move it will most likely be in the middle of a crippling heat wave.
Were this a meme, it would be the suckiest meme of 2005. I'm glad it's not a meme.
